


"He Made Me a Watchman"

by farad



Series: Christmas Carols [5]
Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-22
Updated: 2012-12-22
Packaged: 2017-11-22 00:43:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farad/pseuds/farad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>December 25, morning</p>
            </blockquote>





	"He Made Me a Watchman"

**Author's Note:**

> Set the Christmas after "Obsession"; thanks to Huntersglenn for the beta. Thanks also to Zeke Black and her awesome Magnificent Seven Handbook, with transcripts, pictures of the clothes the boys wore, and every thing else, and the people at Daybook for their quick answers to my specific detail needs! All mistakes my very own.

**_"He made me a watchman_ **   
**_Upon the city wall,_ **   
**_And if I am a Christian,_ **   
**_I am the least of all._ **   
**_Go, Tell It On The Mountain,_ **   
**_Over the hills and everywhere;_ **   
**_Go, Tell It On The Mountain_ **   
**_That Jesus Christ is born."_ **

 

\--from "Go Tell It On the Mountain", verse five;

originally a spiritual sung by plantation slaves

 

Nathan stood, a cup of steaming coffee in his hands as he looked out his back window at the dawn. A glorious morning. The icy rain from last night had stopped, as Josiah said it would, leaving in its wake a new world, one sparkling in the light of the sun. From this position, he could see large areas of bare ground, the pastures for the livery, most of it covered in sheets of ice.

 

Going to be a hell of a trek, getting to the Seminole village, but he had promised Rain he would be there for the celebration. And he wanted to be.

 

It had been a long hard year, what with Chris almost dying, the rest of them having to figure out what they could do to help him, to save him, to keep him from getting himself killed all over again in his quest to find that bitch.

 

And she was that. It wasn't a word Nathan used easily. He'd spent his youth hearing his mother, aunts, sisters, all the females he knew and loved, called that word or some word like it. The first time he'd heard a white woman referred to that way, he'd almost fallen to the floor.

 

This woman, though, this Ella Gaines, she had taken the word past the color of skin or the escapades of a scorned woman. She'd had Chris' wife and child murdered so she could have Chris. And she would have done the same to the six men who rode with him now, the six men who called him friend. Some called her insane; Josiah, in his more retrospective moments, seemed to think there was just something fundamentally wrong with her. It was hard to argue that.

 

But it didn't make Nathan hate her any less.

 

He sipped on his coffee, watching as the ice caught the light of the sun's rays and broke them into hundreds of smaller rays, making the landscape glitter. He had seen mornings like this when he was a boy back in Georgia. Before he and the rest of his family were sold away from his mother.

 

But that wasn't right, one of the other hard truths of this past year. His mother had been dead by then, before they were sold. It was part of why they had been sold, because . . . The very idea of it made him smile. Because the old owner had been afraid that his pa – his father, who Nathan had had spent so much of his life thinking of as a 'good nigger', a man afraid to stand up for himself – would do exactly what he eventually did: kill the overseer, Jonah Catchings, the man who had raped Nathan's own mother and driven her to commit suicide.

 

The thought of what that man had done to his mother, to his family, burned like bile in his belly. It had done something else, too; it had helped him understand what was driving Chris Larabee.

 

Josiah thought that Chris' desire to be alone this holiday season was a good thing, a step forward. That Chris was starting to heal. Buck thought Chris needed to be away from the happiness of Christmas, the reminders of all the things he'd lost.

 

Of the two of them, Buck was probably the closest, but not for the reasons he thought, not because it hurt too bad. With the new knowledge of what his mother had suffered, with the new respect he had for his father and what he had lived with all those years, Nathan thought he understood Chris a little better: Chris didn't want to be around for Christmas for fear of losing the anger, for fear of losing the edge.

 

For fear of letting go of any part of his rage.

 

Chris had done it once already, agreeing to stay in this town for what was supposed to be thirty days. A thirty days that had stretched into almost two years before Ella Gaines had shown up and taken advantage of the blunted edge of his anger.

 

Nathan sighed, looking away from the strange beauty. Here it was Christmas morning, one of the sacred days of the year, and he was thinking on rage and the glory of it. He should be thinking on the good things in life, his time with Rain, his growing love for her, for the life she offered that he had never thought he could have. Peace, contentment, a family that would stay in one place without the fear of being separated.

 

He turned away from the window and walked back to the stove, refilling his mug. His gear was packed already, had been since yesterday. He had a full kit, too, mostly of salves and teas and herbal things that were hard to find that far into the desert.

 

It was just a matter of Josiah's Christmas sermon, which Nathan wouldn't miss. It had been a Christmas tradition when he was a boy, one of the few times when the whole family was allowed to be together. Christmas Day was a day of rest and a day of celebration, good food and sometimes plenty of it, games and time spent just playing without fear of punishment, and a special gift from his family. From his father.

 

He had a special present for Rain, already packed in his saddlebags. Maybe it was time to carry the traditions, the good ones, forward . . . The very idea that there were good ones was something new, too, something he'd never have thought of before this year.

 

Nathan opened the door to his clinic and stepped carefully outside. The deck was icy and slippery, the air cold. He looked toward the church; Josiah was going to place a candle in the window half an hour before he wanted to start the service, so everyone would know. Better than ringing the bell, he'd explained, what with so many people planning to attend the Midnight Mass.

 

Nathan had thought his old friend to be either lying to himself or laughing at himself and the general lack of faith in the town. But last night, most of the town had shown up for the children's Christmas pageant. And when Nathan had looked out before going to bed, he'd seen a number of people making their way to the church for the traditional Midnight Mass.

 

He expected there would be a good number this morning, too.

 

The candle wasn't there yet, but he didn't expect it would be too long. Josiah probably hadn't slept much last night.

 

A new noise caught his attention and Nathan turned to look down the road. Someone was walking on the ice, walking and slipping equally, or so it seemed, but with some determination. Buck.

 

Nathan frowned, turning once more to check – yep, the sun was in the east, rising. What the hell was Buck . . .

 

"Who's hurt?" he called out, his voice carrying in the clear air.

 

Buck startled, one long leg sliding forward too fast. He wobbled, leaning from one side to the other as he struggled to catch his balance, to keep from falling. After a few near misses, he steadied and got both feet on solid ground. "Damn, Nathan, it was almost me! Ain't no need to go scaring a man to death, 'specially here on Christmas morning! Why that's hardly a Christian thing to do!"

 

Nathan rolled his eyes but smiled anyway. "Ain't like you to be up this time of the day, not without some irate husband on your tail. What's got you out and about - and don't tell me church, 'cause there ain't no candle in the window yet."

 

It was Buck's turn to grin, which he did with his usual ease. "Thought I'd make a few Christmas calls, check in on a few shut-ins, that sort of thing."

 

Chris.

 

Nathan shook his head. "Might not be such a good thing to do," he said slowly. "Though you of all people know that, don't you."

 

The smile didn't change; Nathan had noticed long ago that Buck and Ezra shared a few of the same talents, and one of them was to smile like everything in the world was perfect when it was falling apart around you.

 

But the steady gaze fell away. Buck couldn't lie with this eyes.

 

Nathan looked once more to the church – still no candle. "I got a pot of coffee on. Reckon you could stand a cup, what with being up so early. Your horse'll probably appreciate a few more minutes of being warm."

 

Buck hesitated so Nathan used a trick he'd learned from Ezra: he didn't wait for the 'no', just turned and walked back into the clinic. As Ezra had said once, people were usually too polite not to accept an invitation, especially when they were given no chance to refuse. In this case, Ezra was right.

 

Of course, the ice on the steps was a bit of a problem. Nathan heard Buck slip a few times, heard the cursing as Buck banged down a step or had to clutch at the railing to keep from falling. By the time he got inside the clinic, he was breathing hard and limping, and Nathan suspected he'd bruised his shins pretty good.

 

But he accepted the cup of coffee and the offer of a chair, though he waved off an offer to look at the damage and offer some medical aid.

 

"Just bruises, nothing I ain't had before. I'll find some pretty lady to doctor me up later," Buck said with a smile.

 

"Reckon you will at that," Nathan said agreeably. "If you live past bothering Chris."

 

Buck sighed then, and for the first time, the smile fell away and Nathan could see the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the ones that didn't seem to go away anymore. "He was doing so much better," he said softly. "Seemed like he was starting to move on, to see the good in life again. What she did to him - I mean, it was bad enough the first time, but now . . ."

 

Nathan leaned forward over his mug, staring into it for a time as he gathered his thoughts. Then he said carefully, "You ever think there's a reason he is the way he is right now? There's a reason why he needs to be away from here right now?"

 

Buck tilted his head, his eyebrows coming together as he tried to sort out the question. "He lost his wife and boy," he said. "Reckon Christmas is a horrible time for him – all them memories, all that emptiness . . . Don't you think?"

 

"Don't reckon he's empty," Nathan said evenly. "If I was him, I'd be filled up with anger, so much that I don't know that I could sleep at night. Anger and guilt, for being the one that led that crazy woman to kill them."  


Buck stared at him then he looked at his coffee mug. He took a sip, a long one, and Nathan knew he was thinking. After he put the mug back down, he said slowly, "You think he – needs that anger? That he stays away 'cause he don't want nothing cutting into it?"

 

Nathan looked at Buck and nodded. "Anger's a powerful thing. It can save a man's life – make him live when everything says he should be dead."

 

Buck stared at him, and for the first time since March, since Chris Larabee had laid on the ground bleeding from a bullet in his chest, Nathan saw the other man realize how close it had been. Buck swallowed, this time without the help of coffee. "How – how is he now?"

 

Nathan smiled. "You've seen him, you know he's all right, physically, at least. But there are lots of other things that can kill a man, things that have to do with wanting to live. Right now, that anger is holding away a lot of other things. You might think you're helping by trying to make him see past it, but I ain't sure that right now, that's the best plan. He's got a lot of hurting and a lot of guilt. When some of that anger goes away – and it will, in time, you've already seen it – when it does, that guilt is gonna slip right in to take its place. And that's going to be worse. That will eat him from the inside. At least right now while he's angry, we can work on the guilt. And he can too – which he is. As long as he's got a plan to find her, then he's got something to focus on. We can work on the guilt while he's working on finding her."

 

"You really think . . . I mean, Sara and Adam were his life. To know that they're dead because he walked away from a woman he didn't love . . ."

 

"Was it his fault she was crazy?" Nathan asked.

 

Buck sighed but shook his head. "That sort of crazy – something's just wrong. From what Hilda told me," his face clouded as he said her name, but he went on, "she might have killed her husband, too. I don't understand it, how a woman can be – well," he sighed again. "I know women can be as bad as men – hell, Maddy shot JD, almost killed him, now this bitch kills Chris' family, almost kills us. Yeah, women can be as crazy as men, maybe more. I reckon crazy is just damned crazy, no matter what. Just – it just don't seem right, though. I can't even consider my ma . . ."

 

Nathan turned to look at him, thinking that he meant something, but Buck's eyes were closed, his brow creased as if he were trying to puzzle out the world's biggest puzzle.

 

Nathan sipped his coffee, wondering if the candle was on in the church yet. Wondering if he should have kept his mouth shut about Chris. Wondering how his life would have been different if his daddy had killed Catchings before they'd been sold.

 

He opened his mouth to tell Buck that he might oughta leave Chris be until he was ready to come back to town. That wasn't, though, what came out of his mouth.

 

"After my daddy's trial and before he died, I spent a lot of time studying everything I could find about women who killed themselves. My daddy – he carried that around with him all his life, Buck, the idea that he could have done something different, that if he'd killed Catchings when the man had first started up with my momma, then she'd have been alive to take care of us. Didn't seem to matter to him that he would have been dead – and that we might have been dead as well, made to pay the price, too, for fear that we'd try to do the same thing. No, he carried around the guilt for something that he couldn't do anything to make better."

 

Buck was looking at him now, and he opened his mouth to say something, but Nathan held up a finger and went on. "I couldn't find a lot, but what I could find was this: women ain't as given to doing things to hurt other people, not physically, as men are. Don't mean that there ain't some, cause there are, women who enjoy torturing slaves and murdering husbands – what Ella Gaines is. But most women hurt themselves first. When they can't save others from pain, they can't live with themselves. To make the pain stop, they take their own lives. That's what my momma did." He got up and went to the coffee pot, as much to move around as to pour them more coffee. "It weren't Chris' fault that she did what she did any more than it was mine or yours. She's crazy, a special kind of crazy. And we got to make Chris understand that."

 

He walked back to the table, carrying the pot with a thick piece of cloth to keep from burning himself. As he refilled their mugs, Buck said, "I didn't mean anything about your ma - "

 

"I know that. But I do mean something about Chris. Leave him be. Let him have some time to hold onto his anger – until we can make him see through the rest of it."

 

Buck blew out a long breath but nodded.

 

They sat for a few minutes, sipping at their coffee, lost in their own thoughts. Eventually, Buck said, "You got Rain something nice?"

 

Nathan looked at him and grinned. "I do, indeed. And it ain't no frog-gigger."

 

Buck laughed, reaching up to slap Nathan on the shoulder. "Guess I could go take a nap. It was a pretty short night. You ain't joining us for dinner, are you? You know Mary and Gloria been cooking like the Army's coming from Fort Yuma – hell, they must've made a hundred loaves of bread yesterday, half of them with raisins!""

 

Nathan shook his head. "If there's one thing I've learned this year, it's that time ain't standing still. Reckon y'all can take care of your ownselves for a few days."

 

Buck pushed up from the table but he stopped and turned back, looking at Nathan. "Might," he said quietly, "but don't be gone long. No matter what you think about why men survive, we need you. All of us."

 

Nathan felt something warm settle in his belly, and it grew even warmer as Buck held out his hand, taking Nathan's in a firm grip. "Been a hard year for all of us, ain't a one of us got out of this clean. Think it took all of us to get here."

 

Nathan nodded. "As Josiah would say, 'Amen to that'."

 

As he followed Buck outside, the sun was a little higher, the ice beginning to melt. The candle was lit in the church window and several people were moving slowly down the road toward it.

 

Buck made it down the stairs without falling, though there were a few choice words which left Nathan laughing after him. He went back in, shut down the fire in the stove and gathered up his saddlebags, gun, knives, and coat. Looking around the room one last time before he went out the door, he smiled and nodded to himself. It had been one hell of a year. But it was Christmas, and they were all still alive, and better, they were all still together.

 

He reckoned they would be this time next year, too.

 

And on his ride out to the village, he'd make a slight detour, just to check and make sure.

 


End file.
